Car Crashes & Other Sad Stories
Reviewed by Marc Savlov, Fri., June 9, 2000
Car Crashes & Other Sad Stories
by Mell KilpatrickTaschen, 175 pp., $29.99
Ten years ago this would have ended up on my coffeetable, sitting alongside Gray's Anatomy and some treatise on forensic photography. Ten years closer to the soil and I've mellowed like a fine rotgut, choosing instead to keep it on the shelf, out of dog-harm's way where it will be less likely to upset visiting co-eds. Splendid, crystal-clear black and white photographs of car crashes, circa 1950-something. The shutter has caught these sorry folk in the act of leaving, forever. Lipstick traces from the kiss of steel besmirch their otherwise unfathomable faces. "What the -- ?!" is an expression repeated over and over, a symphony of surprise loss of forward momentum. Bang! It's over. Not as grisly as you might expect and gorgeous in their own way, Kilpatrick's shots are eerily reminiscent of WeeGee's crime-scene photos from the same era. There's a savage beauty to these mangled hulks of metal and flesh, a final "I told you so," and then just the simple, quiet hiss of escaping steam and fluids and a soul or two.
